I need advice about pursuing film school...

Filmkid2003 said:
I don't want to wake up five years from now and feel like I am stuck in a job that I neither enjoy or gain any fulfillment from because I gave up on my dream.
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It's not a dream, just another reality.
I've been at this business since 1981 Started shooting 35mm animation on an Oxberry (a what?) for broadcast TV in NYC. In the 90s I shot all live action in 35mm for commercials and some 16mm. Then I shot stock in the Az desert shooting timelapse clouds when it was still something new and worth anything and sold through Hotshots in NYC and some La stock houses. In 99 the bottom dropped out of stock footage with cheap royalty free web sales so that dream had a wakeup call. After 2000 I moved to LA and still sold stock to live on and got a few feature projects. (Major films, but I won't bother dropping names cause nobody cares or would believe it anyway.) I left La in 2001 after 2 of the longest strikes in history, realizing it was a crap shoot at best. I then checked out of the USA completely and moved to SE Asia. Now I make a better living than ever shooting commercials, corporates, and web projects with a hand full of DSLRs and a few i7 PCs. I mostly work alone so my prices are attractive and I have work lined up for the next year or 3. So what was a $5,000 directors fee in the 80s of a $100,000 plus budget is now a $5,000 total production fee to which I still make $5,000 at the end. I still have to fight for payment and it's a totally unforgiving and unreliable existence. I hate it (until I get paid of course), but there is nothing better out there. The biggest difference is numbers of competition players. My son who just had his 6th birthday is already a skilled editor on CS6. He edits all his own films and now subtitles all his dialogue from the film, creates titles in Photoshop imports them and edits it on screen to match scenes. He's now cutting music tracks to the beat seamlessly, and he just started 1st grade yesterday. Scary right?. I don't help him or encourage him, he just want to do it all on his own. I don't want him cutting anything in his future except checks. That's your future competition. You have to be better faster, cheaper or you will get mowed down.
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I'm a young gun here, been out of college for about 5 years now. I make my living shooting commercial, corporate, non-profit documentary, etc. in Minneapolis. Not a huge film industry but there is a pretty big advertising industry, with a lot of shooters.

One thing I'll say though... Film school will only be what you make it, and most of it is making connections. A lot of people think going to film school is some magic thing where you'll pop out the other side with a degree and you have a career. In my experience, your degree and schooling is worthless if you don't have the work and quality. I know a guy that didn't finish college and he's one of the best DP's I know. Because he shoots constantly. He's always learning, reading, watching, and trying to get better. Do people care that he didn't finish school? No, because his shots are fantastic and when they hire him they know they are going to get something incredible.

It's always great to have passion projects, but I personally have stayed away from working on "indie features". At this point in my career, I'm still figuring out my style and getting better at what I do. I don't feel I'm good enough yet to stretch myself across an hour+ story. This is why I like working on music videos and shorts. They give you an opportunity to spend a day or two (instead of weeks) shooting a few key scenes for a short story.

It sounds like if you wore all of those hats working on your film, you didn't have a lot of collaborators. One of the biggest things I did when coming to Minneapolis was networking. I found videos online and sent messages to people, introducing myself and asking if they wanted to grab coffee or a beer and talk shop. Some of these guys I met early on are great friends of mine now. If I needed to assemble a team for a project, I've got a slew of directors, DP's, editors, sound, gaffers, and producers that I could contact.

At this point I'm probably rambling, but another reason I shy away from the feature length stuff is because with "no budget" it's hard to convince other collaborators that they are getting something out of it. Usually, the project is the director's baby and they are just trying to enlist help to make it a reality. That doesn't benefit all the other people involved. It might sound silly, but people I've had work on cheap/free projects are usually people that I've also booked on paid gigs before. And it goes both ways. If a director who has hired me for a couple shoots contacts me and is like "Hey man, so I've got Passion Project X, would you want to work on it?" I'm less likely to feel like he's some dude that wants to just use me for my camera. Quid pro quo.

Many of us have found ways to make this whole "filmmaking" thing into a career (I put it into quotes because usually the reason we get paid to make stuff is because a company backs it and turns it into advertising). But it doesn't have to be a career. If you love making films to tell stories, you can keep doing it, no matter how you generate income. I play my guitar all the time, whether I'm just noodling or rocking out, because I enjoy it. I don't need to be in a band or go on tour. It's an outlet for me, just like filmmaking may be for you.

Last thought: I personally don't think film school or other schooling (web development) is a necessity. A friend of mine works in an interactive department at an ad agency, she started coding while working at some small company and being asked to make a website. She didn't go to school for it. She just got good at it. I know a lot of these are anecdotal evidence but I hope they illustrate that you don't need to get yourself into tens of thousands of dollars in debt to learn a trade and get a job. That's a tough situation that a lot of people are in right now.
 
jshbckr said:
I found videos online and sent messages to people, introducing myself and asking if they wanted to grab coffee or a beer and talk shop. Some of these guys I met early on are great friends of mine now. If I needed to assemble a team for a project, I've got a slew of directors, DP's, editors, sound, gaffers, and producers that I could contact.
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That's how make a successful business in film. Less dreaming and more networking.
 
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